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1. The Faintest Dwarf Galaxies

   https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-astro-091918-104453  

   Simon, Joshua D. (August 2019, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics)

   The lowest luminosity ([Formula: see text] L[Formula: see text]) Milky Way satellite galaxies represent the extreme lower limit of the galaxy luminosity function. These ultra-faint dwarfs are the oldest, most dark matter–dominated, most metal-poor, and least chemically evolved stellar systems known. They therefore provide unique windows into the formation of the first galaxies and the behavior of dark matter on small scales. In this review, we summarize the discovery of ultra-faint dwarfs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in 2005 and the subsequent observational and theoretical progress in understanding their nature and origin. We describe their stellar kinematics, chemical abundance patterns, structural properties, stellar populations, orbits, and luminosity function, as well as what can be learned from each type of measurement. We conclude the following: ▪ In most cases, the stellar velocity dispersions of ultra-faint dwarfs are robust against systematic uncertainties such as binary stars and foreground contamination. ▪ The chemical abundance patterns of stars in ultra-faint dwarfs require two sources of r-process elements, one of which can likely be attributed to neutron star mergers. ▪ Even under conservative assumptions, only a small fraction of ultra-faint dwarfs may have suffered significant tidal stripping of their stellar components. ▪ Determining the properties of the faintest dwarfs out to the virial radius of the Milky Way will require very large investments of observing time with future telescopes. Finally, we offer a look forward at the observations that will be possible with future facilities as the push toward a complete census of the Local Group dwarf galaxy population continues. 

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2. The Dust Attenuation Law in Galaxies

   https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-astro-032620-021933  

   Salim, Samir; Narayanan, Desika (August 2020, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics)

   null (Ed.)

   Understanding the properties of dust attenuation curves in galaxies and the physical mechanisms that shape them are among the fundamental questions of extragalactic astrophysics, with great practical significance for deriving the physical properties of galaxies. Attenuation curves result from a combination of dust grain properties, dust content, and the spatial arrangement of dust and different populations of stars. In this review, we assess the state of the field, paying particular attention to extinction curves as the building blocks of attenuation laws. We introduce a quantitative framework to characterize extinction and attenuation curves, present a theoretical foundation for interpreting empirical results, overview an array of observational methods, and review observational results at low and high redshifts. Our main conclusions include the following: ▪  Attenuation curves exhibit a wide range of UV-through-optical slopes, from curves with shallow (Milky Way–like) slopes to those exceeding the slope of the Small Magellanic Cloud extinction curve. ▪  The slopes of the curves correlate strongly with the effective optical opacities, in the sense that galaxies with lower dust column density (lower visual attenuation) tend to have steeper slopes, whereas the galaxies with higher dust column density have shallower (grayer) slopes. ▪  Galaxies exhibit a range of 2175-Å UV bump strengths, including no bump, but, on average, are suppressed compared with the average Milky Way extinction curve. ▪  Theoretical studies indicate that both the correlation between the slope and the dust column as well as variations in bump strength may result from geometric and radiative transfer effects. 

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3. Baryon cycles in the biggest galaxies

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2022.04.005  

   Donahue, Megan; Voit, G. Mark (August 2022, Physics Reports)
4. Spitzer Imaging of the SHIELD Galaxies

   Klapkowski, M.; Cannon, J.; Adams, E.; Giovanelli, R.; Haynes, M.; Hirschauer, A.; Janowiecki, S.; Jones, M.; McQuinn, K.; Rhode, K.; et al (January 2020, American Astronomical Society meeting)

   We present new Spitzer 3.6 µm images of the 82 galaxies in the "Survey of HI in Extremely Low-mass Dwarfs" (SHIELD). Selected from the ALFALFA blind HI survey, SHIELD is a volumetrically complete sample of galaxies with HI mass reservoirs smaller than 2x107 M☉. These galaxies populate extreme portions of parameter space and they offer unique opportunities to explore the physical properties of very low-mass halos in the local Universe. The new Spitzer images allow us to measure the stellar masses of the SHIELD galaxies. We discuss methods used to remove image artifacts and to excise foreground and background contaminants. We then measure the total 3.6 µm fluxes of the systems and apply a mass to light ratio in order to derive their stellar masses. We discuss the application of this technique to the Leoncino dwarf (AGC198691, one of the most extremely metal-poor galaxies known), resulting in a stellar mass of 7.3x107 M☉. This work has been supported by NSF AST-1637339 and by Macalester College. 

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5. Galaxies Going Bananas: Inferring the 3D Geometry of High-redshift Galaxies with JWST-CEERS

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad1a13  

   Pandya, Viraj; Zhang_张, Haowen 昊文; Huertas-Company, Marc; Iyer, Kartheik G; McGrath, Elizabeth; Barro, Guillermo; Finkelstein, Steven L; Kümmel, Martin; Hartley, William G; Ferguson, Henry C; et al (February 2024, The Astrophysical Journal)

   Abstract The 3D geometries of high-redshift galaxies remain poorly understood. We build a differentiable Bayesian model and use Hamiltonian Monte Carlo to efficiently and robustly infer the 3D shapes of star-forming galaxies in James Webb Space Telescope Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science observations with $\log M_{*}/M_{\odot }=9.0–10.5$atz= 0.5–8.0. We reproduce previous results from the Hubble Space Telescope Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey in a fraction of the computing time and constrain the mean ellipticity, triaxiality, size, and covariances with samples as small as ∼50 galaxies. We find high 3D ellipticities for all mass–redshift bins, suggesting oblate (disky) or prolate (elongated) geometries. We break that degeneracy by constraining the mean triaxiality to be ∼1 for $\log M_{*}/M_{\odot }=9.0–9.5$dwarfs atz> 1 (favoring the prolate scenario), with significantly lower triaxialities for higher masses and lower redshifts indicating the emergence of disks. The prolate population traces out a “banana” in the projected $b/a–\log a$diagram with an excess of low-b/a, large- $\log a$galaxies. The dwarf prolate fraction rises from ∼25% atz= 0.5–1.0 to ∼50%–80% atz= 3–8. Our results imply a second kind of disk settling from oval (triaxial) to more circular (axisymmetric) shapes with time. We simultaneously constrain the 3D size–mass relation and its dependence on 3D geometry. High-probability prolate and oblate candidates show remarkably similar Sérsic indices (n∼ 1), nonparametric morphological properties, and specific star formation rates. Both tend to be visually classified as disks or irregular, but edge-on oblate candidates show more dust attenuation. We discuss selection effects, follow-up prospects, and theoretical implications. 

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